Thursday, May 26, 2016

How should the price of a book be determined?

Welcome to the newest Book Lover Poll.

Your voice matters here.

When you pick up a new book, I'm sure the price is something you consider before hitting that purchase button. So do I, but until I became a writer, I didn't know who set the prices or what they were based on. These days, that has become so complicated with each store forcing the author to sell at their prices that I won't even try to explain it. The bottom line is that the price you pay for a book is NOT set by the writer of that book. We 'suggest' a price, the stores list it and then cut it (there are a few exceptions, such as iTunes) and the author is paid less than what they've already lowered it to. Consider this: If an editor makes 2 cents per word to edit (Yes, per word. Not page, word. That is the standard rate. Better editors make more.) shouldn't the author make at least double that for having written it? If it is not reasonable for the writers, than it is also not reasonable for the editors. They didn't write the material, they're cleaning it up. The hardest worker in the chain is the author, but they make the least amount of profit from it. That has to change.

What can you do?

Buy directly from the author on their websites. It isn't hard now to put a pdf or epub on your computer, then transfer it to any phone or tablet that you have. Supporting the author is a reader's way of saying that hard work deserves the profit, not greedy stores who add delivery fees for electronic copies. They call them delivery fees because no reader would pay Amazon's store-wide utility bills in exchange for books. But that's exactly what happens every day. Your fee helps to pay for all the all other product storage, as well as your own. Amazon then takes 30%-65% of the author profit as their cut. Double-dipping should be illegal. If they want to charge for all of that (and I understand they need to cover their expenses) then it should be clearly labeled as combined utility costs. Charging a delivery fee for an electronic book is a scam.

BookBub has begun pay-per-click advertising for authors.
That means the author is charged for your click from the email, even if you don’t
download that title.

*For those of you who don’t know, pay-per-click is one of
the biggest scams ever invented online. The advertiser charges the buyer for
EACH click, even when nothing is bought. So, say you like the email of the book
and click on it, but when you get to the landing page, you realize the book isn’t
your type and you don’t get a copy. The author still gets charged for that
click.

Their other system is a flat fee to be added to the email
and I believe they are continuing it. These new, ‘special’ ads will be below
each regular ad, giving the reader more clutter for their buck. Sounds like a
system doomed to fail, right? Google made this famous, then FB picked it up,
but it is a rip-off and most people don’t bother. Only traditional publishers
and brand names can afford to pay for clicks with no download. The other way
did not guarantee a download, but at least you weren’t being charged $1.25 for
each click (going rate for book ads on Google that are successful). In summary,
do everyone a favor and try not to click on the ‘special’ ads unless you KNOW
you want to try the book. If you guys and gals don’t click it, Bookbub might
nix it.

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